Getting abreast of hot sales tack

The Diary can now draw a veil over the sex triangle that was Club 18-30, Saatchi & Saatchi and the moral minority. Last week, the Marketing Society in its wisdom decided to stage a seminar entitled “Sex Sells? A not too solemn look at advertising morality”.

Saatchi revealed that last year’s campaign, which gave the world “Beaver España”, was devised on the basis of research revealing that young people spend their time on holiday “getting drunk, staying out late, getting laid and behaving badly”.

The sales hike of 35 per cent which followed the campaign suggests that the research was right. But what conference chairman and advertising’s most famous Christian, Francis Goodwin, made of it all is not quite clear.